Bolton gets off to good start at U.N.

Posted: Wednesday, September 14, 2005

A congregation of 175 world leaders will descend on New York City today. And it won't be business as usual.

America’s new ambassador, John Bolton, has already started to make waves internationally by proposing 750 edits to the organization’s “Outcome Document,” a paper dealing with worldwide development efforts and interventions to stop human rights catastrophes, according to The Washington Post.

The summit, which was supposed to be a five-year review of the millennium goals, will now be a place where the United States tells the world that those goals, while noble, are unattainable.

In 2000, the group decided that by 2015 it would cut poverty in half and achieve universal primary education. Five years in, the group itself is already complaining not enough progress is being made.

Bolton wants to refer to those proposals as “international development goals,” with no set time limit to achieve them.

It seems like a smart move.

In addition, the United States is proposing to focus on the 2002 Monterrey Consensus, which concluded that developing countries need to take more responsibility for their own growth by fighting corruption, improving their investment climates and becoming more economically friendly, said The Economist.

Other changes include the section “Responsibility to protect.” Under that, Bolton has proposed language changes that would avoid some automatic requirements for the American military to invade and provide arms to foreign countries, if a humanitarian intervention is needed.

Bolton is off to a good start. The United States is voicing what everyone already knows. Fixing the world in 15 years was never going to happen. America can no longer be the savior and checkbook.